New Windsor Cantonment
…Going, going, gone!
A “cantonment” was a more permanent quarters for troops than an encampment of tents. New Windsor, like Valley Forge, contained orderly lines of log huts that housed troops over the winter. After the Revolutionary War, New Windsor’s huts were sold at auction according to General Washington’s orders to help pay the army’s substantial debts.
According to local tradition, merchant Nathaniel Sackett purchased one of the cantonment’s huts at auction and reused it in nearby Mountainville, where it formed part of a larger home for nearly 150 years. In 1933, the rebuilt hut was dismantled and reassembled here, perhaps the only surviving example of a structure built by the Continental Army.
Marker can be reached from Temple Hill Road (New York Route 300), on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
